Ants on the Melon
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This evening Dave and I drove up to the One World Theatre in Austin to see the California Guitar Trio. We were late leaving the office, so Chuck gave us some super secret directions to the venue that helped take some time off the trip. Dave Roth is one funny guy. He had me laughing so hard on the way to the concert that I could barely breath. His stories about rednecks, Excel based house plans, and limosine schoolbuses are insane, ask him about them some time. We arrived at the theater around 7:15, about 15 minutes after the show started, and found our seats next to Avie where we sat down for the remainder of the show.

I had pretty high expectations for the Trio, as I have heard some of their stuff before. I was blown away, these guys are on an entirely different level than any musicans I have ever seen before. One of the most amazing things I have seen in a while was their performance of Bach’s Prelude using something called a “circulation technique.” Using this technique each musician plays every third note and together it sounds as if a single person were performing the song. Amazing stuff that you have to see to get an idea for just how impressive it is. They ended the night with a great version of Bohemian Rhapsody and blisteringly fast version of the Dick Dale’s Miserlou, popularly known as the Pulp Fiction theme song.

Afterwards Avie and I drove back to Camp Young Judea where Alana is teaching and dancing this weekend. It’s a really nice place, and they have a very nice open wireless network so I am happy. I hope to get some work done this weekend, and maybe catch up on some reading that I have been trying to do.

Sarah was in town this week on a business trip, and I was able to meet up with her yesterday evening. We walked around downtown for a little while and then she grabbed her iBook and I brought her out to see our apartment. I spent some time teaching her how to do some neat stuff with her Apple laptop, and then we met up with Todd for dinner at Rosario’s. Todd and Sarah are both from Covington, Louisiana and were in the same high school class in Mandeville, but did not know each other. We had a lot of fun at dinner and afterwards I dropped her off at her hotel so she could study for a test. Todd came over to watch Ocean’s 12 with Alana and me.

Tonight I was originally going to hang out with Brandon, but since Sarah was in town for such a short time I asked Brandon if we could reschedule to next week. Sarah called just before I was going to leave to go pick her up from downtown to say that she was going to be busy with work stuff and would probably not be able to hang out tonight. Bummer, but around this same time I began to have a problem…

You see, I have pretty bad allergies, and right now there is something wicked in the air here in southern Texas. I can barely walk outside without sneezing and having my nose run off. I’ve been taking Zyrtec for the past few days and that helps some, but my eyes still itch and well, I still have pretty bad allergies. Well, today during the peer review session my eyes were itching extremely bad and it got to the point where Will suggested that I go take some benedryl type medicine that he had at his desk. I went back to our desks, grabbed two pills from the bottle, returned to the room and took the pills. Bad, bad idea. Apparently I only should have taken one pill, which everyone told me later. By the time that Sarah called I was passing out (literally) in my desk chair. It was a very strange feeling, and I believe I blacked out at some point because I remember reality fading back in and realizing that Will and Dave were staring at me and laughing. They stare and laugh at me a lot, in fact, everyone at the office does, so that was not unusual. It was scary this time because I couldn’t remember the past couple minutes. I remembered putting my head down on my desk, and at some point noticing that they were watching me. Freaky.

So, by the time Sarah called to say that she would not be able to hang out this evening, I was pretty much in a state were I wouldn’t be able to hang out even if I wanted to. I eventually fell back to sleep at my desk and I decided this was ok because there was no way I would drive in that condition. I woke up about an hour later and felt that I was aware enough to drive, so I headed home a little before 7:00. I fell asleep as soon as I got home and just woke up about half an hour ago.

The moral of the story is this: if Will ever offers you some medicine that he calls “benedryl,” kindly refuse, that stuff is intense!

Tomorrow Dave and I are heading up to Austin to see The California Guitar Trio with Alana’s dad. I am pretty stoked about the concert, they are really amazing. Afterwards I will be riding with her dad back to Wimberley, TX to spend the weekend there. I am hoping to get a chance to see Hill Country Guitars.

Eleven Hundred Springs is quickly becoming one of my favorite bands.

Today Todd and I completed the second and final day of Software Testing and Quality Assurance training. It has been an interesting introduction to the world of professional software testing, and quite an awakening. As has happened so many times in my career as a software developer, I once again have realized how little I know about something very important.

When the course was over we stopped by Waterloo Records, a store I have heard a lot about. This place is amazing. They have an entire wall for new releases of Texas Music, and they have in stock pretty much every album of every artist that I am even slightly interested in. I walked out of there with three items:

• Todd Snider’s East Nashville Skyline
• Eleven Hundred Springs’ No Stranger to the Blues (an album I can find almost no information about online)
• Growin’ A Beard including the soundtrack by The Gourds

We decided to make one more stop before heading back to ole’ San Antone, so we stopped by the Austin Apple Store at the Barton Creek mall. After visiting the SoHo Store, the rest of the Apple retail outlets seem much less impressive.

I am back home in San Antonio now and very ready to get back to work tomorrow.

Whew, the past two days have been crazy.

We started off yesterday morning by going to the Mandolin Brothers Guitar and Mandolin shop in Staten Island. This place is completely amazing, they only carry the best instruments out there. I’ve got some pictures of the store that I will post later. Several walls of mandolins, Gibson, Collings, etc, and the guitar selection was even bigger. They had walls of dobro’s, banjos, everything. I was amazed.

After that we took the Staten Island Ferry into the city. Alana’s friend Mickey was our tour guide for the day, so it was nice to have someone who could show us around. We went to the SOHO Apple Store, which was really cool as well. Then we went to lots of other places that I can’t remember right now, but it was all very impressive.

Today we woke up around 10:30 and made it out around noon to get lunch and make our way to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s really amazing how much great art they have there.

After that we went to Times Square and walked around, a lot. I’m completely exhausted now, but we are about to go to dinner with Alana’s aunt and her family.

Drivers in New York are still crazy.

So I finally set up a blog. Not that I have anything strikingly interesting to talk about, but occasionally there is something that is worth retelling, or I find some music that others should hear.

Anyway, I am going to see Eleven Hundred Springs tonight at Floore’s Country Store. I have not seen them before, but I’ve heard some of their stuff and I liked most of what I have heard.